Family navigates 75 years of World Travel

Feb. 18, 2013

Updated Aug. 21, 2013 1:17 p.m.

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The front door of the World Travel office at Civic Center Drive West and North Main Street in Santa Ana. COURTESY OF WORLD TRAVEL

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Sharon and Tom Jackson, owners of World Travel in Santa Ana, show some of their favorite mementoes. The items show the transition from steamer trunks to space travel. Sharon holds a model of the Virgin Galactic space vehicle they hope to sell seats on. JEBB HARRIS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Tom Jackson, president of World Travel. is shown in a photo from a travel agent expedition from New York to Moscow in 1968. Russia attacked Czechoslovakia during the trip. JEBB HARRIS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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A statement of sale documents the purchase of World Travel for $150 in 1939 by Harry Jackson, left and a partner. Shown in the vintage photo with Harry is son Tom, who now owns the agency. A 1938 steamer tour brochure, at left, and an image of the Virgin Galactic space vehicle show the changes the company has been through. JEBB HARRIS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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At World Travel in Santa Ana, President Tom Jackson, right, works with travel advisor Nancy Villanueva. The agency also has brick-and-mortar offices in Carmel, Camarillo, and Yorba Linda and a virtual office in the Inland Empire. JEBB HARRIS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Sharon and Tom Jackson, owners of World Travel in Santa Ana, pause for a smooch while showing some of their favorite mementoes. Tom who has been to 151 countries collects hats from his visits. JEBB HARRIS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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A 1952 passport photo of Tom Jackson, then about 12, with mother, Helen, that was used during a 60-day World Travel tour of Europe. Jackson now runs the company in Santa Ana, which is celebrating 75 years in the business. JEBB HARRIS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Sharon and Tom Jackson, owners of World Travel in Santa Ana, react to a phone message from a client. World Travel is celebrating 75 years in the business. JEBB HARRIS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Tom and Sharon Jackson are owners of World Travel in Santa Ana, which is celebrating 75 years in the business. They have been married for 28 years. JEBB HARRIS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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World Travel in Santa Ana has been a fixture in Santa Ana since 1938. The current office on Main Street in Santa Ana was built in 1922. JEBB HARRIS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Sharon and Tom Jackson, owners of World Travel, look at the room that once was filled with Internet hardware and an IT manager. Now their data is stored in the cloud, just one of the many changes the company has gone through. JEBB HARRIS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Sharon and Tom Jackson, owners of World Travel in Santa Ana, pose with some travel mementoes. Tom collects hats; Sharon wears one from Mongolia, he from Australia. JEBB HARRIS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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The World Travel office building in Santa Ana was built in 1922. Harry Jackson and Thomas Glenn moved the company's offices there in the 1940s. COURTESY OF WORLD TRAVEL

Lessons learned

It takes a certain attitude and nimbleness to stay in business 75 years. Here are some of the lessons Tom Jackson learned heading World Travel:

•Run a business like a business, not a hobby, so you can make sure to pay the bills.

•Have a clear understanding of what your business is and stick to it.

•Meet challenges like Internet competition head on.

•Change with the times.

When Harry Jackson and Thomas Glenn took over World Travel in Santa Ana, the company had two phone numbers: 2818 and 3956. That was it. Just four digits for each line. The year was 1938, and the city only had about 7,200 telephones, so there was no need for three-digit prefixes or area codes.

In those days, a travel agent working on the phone faced a dilemma when the other line rang. To answer the second line, the employee had to physically go into the office where the other phone was located. There were no extra buttons for extensions.

Now, 75 years later, World Travel has a 10-digit toll-free number used by customers around the world. While travel has evolved from the steamship to the spaceship, one thing remains the same: The company is still being run by a Jackson – Harry's son, Tom, who is the 73-year-old president.

Ed Hart, director of the Center for Family Business at Cal State Fullerton, calls the travel agency's 75 years in business a remarkable run, especially considering the upheavals in the travel industry over the past seven decades.

"In family businesses in general, 70 percent don't make the transition from Generation One to Generation Two," Hart said.

Tom Jackson said the business has survived all these years because of a fundamental piece of advice his father gave him early on: "Run it like a business. Make sure you can pay the rent and the bills."

Jackson said his father didn't have any grand plan when the two men bought the business. They were teachers at what was then called Santa Ana Junior College and just wanted to travel, so they decided, "Let's start a travel business."

They bought World Travel Bureau for $150, which included everything – files, desk, four chairs, supply rack and mailing list, all neatly itemized in sepia-colored ink on the statement of sale. (Tom Jackson said they paid $100 down, but nobody knows if the remaining $50 ever got paid.)

It was not the greatest time to start a business, with the country still struggling after the Depression. The pair decided to target teachers and "the local gentry" for what they called their cooperative educational tours. The first tour, in 1938, was a 58-day trip to Europe. The cost was $680.50 for third-class ocean passage or $760 for an upgrade to tourist class.

The next year they faced their first challenge. Their 1939 tour was on the last boat back before the Germans attacked Poland. The senior Jackson soon joined the U.S. Army Air Corps and left the business in the hands of two sisters who worked for him. His instructions: "Just keep it going any way you can because I'll be back."

After the war, Harry Jackson picked up where he had left off. Son Tom joined him at age 12 in the summer of 1952, helping with brochures and booking then-popular trips to Catalina Island. Tom Jackson got to travel, too. His first tour was 78 days in Africa in 1958, a continent he said he still never tires of visiting.

The company was then two businesses – the tour operation and the travel agency. That changed in 1974, when the Arab-Israeli Yom Kippur War broke out and World Travel had to cancel 14 tours.

"We worked for a year on those tours, and in one day it all dissolved," Tom Jackson recalled. "But it didn't put us out of business because of that advice my father gave me, 'Always be able to pay your bills.'"

By then the senior Jackson was retired and Glenn had left the company. Tom Jackson was faced with his first big decision: what to do about the tour business. He decided there was too much risk for the payoff and shut down the tour operation.

He chose, instead, to focus on the travel agency. To succeed, he decided, he needed to grow and undertook a major expansion. He took the company from a network of seven travel agencies to 15 spread from Orange County and the Inland Empire to Carmel.

The company thrived until the 1990s, when the next threat loomed – the airlines started cutting back and eventually eliminated commissions for travel agents booking air travel.

"It's a challenge when your see your remuneration going to zero," Jackson said. "If you don't start changing, you aren't going to be able to stay in business."

So he made his next big decision. He started charging trip-planning fees. He knew some clients would leave, using new online tools to book their own trips. Jackson banked on the fact that other clients would value his staff's expertise, especially in planning complex trips with numerous legs.

He also downsized, eliminating offices. What is now called World Travel Family of Agencies has three other brick-and-mortar affiliated agencies in Camarillo, Carmel and Yorba Linda in addition to the Santa Ana headquarters.

The company also has one virtual office in the Inland Empire, where staff members works out of their homes.

Jackson conceded that the company has faced unprecedented challenges the past three years, due to the recession and the virtual disappearance of the middle-class traveler from the market. But, following his father's advice, he managed the business conservatively and paid the bills.

As the business enters its 75th year, Jackson has no plans to retire.

His next venture? Space travel. He now is associated with Virgin Galactic, the New Mexico-based private "spaceline" founded by Richard Branson that plans to launch tourist flights into sub-orbital space.

Jackson sees it as a new business opportunity. He has sold one ticket sold so far. For $200,000.

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